Do the ballot rules even allow the VP candidate to be at the top of the ticket? Any expectation that Trump would step down absent prosecution and impeachment isn't worth taking seriously. But then, this post isn't either.

I found out this morning that my dept chair signed the public "Scholars and Writers for Trump" statement and was too upset to work properly all day. I think this is the first time that someone with pretty direct power over me is a fascist.

Isn't this the next iteration of "Oh, is it going to be so obvious Trump will lose in a landslide that he'll drop out?" No, he won't drop out or be pushed out, top Republicans have already shown their cravenness ten times over, the underlying fact is that moving against him would ruin them among the grassroots they're tied to, even if they wanted to which is not exactly clear either.

My mantra when Clinton was down in the polls was regression to the mean, and it served me well. But it cuts both ways.

Uh, I don't really think this means Mike Pence is going to be president. I thought it was an obvious joke, but you people are so pessimistic that you're pessimistic enough to think it might be serious, making you way more pessimistic than I am!

I am, however, going to find time to despair on election day when we learn just how many millions of people voted for Trump.

On Facebook I saw someone express concern that Trump would drop out of the race and then Pence would win, which does answer my implicit question in 2. I dunno, I thought you might actually have had something (like what I just said) in mind, somehow! You're a clever guy!

Just as the physician might say that there lives perhaps not one single man who is in perfect health, so one might say perhaps that there lives not one single man who after all is not to some extent in despair, in whose inmost parts there does not dwell a disquietude, a perturbation, a discord, an anxious dread of an unknown something, or of a something he does not even dare to make acquaintance with, dread of a possibility of life, or dread of himself, so that, after all, as physicians speak of a man going about with a disease in him, this man is going about and carrying a sickness of the spirit, which only rarely and in glimpses, by and with a dread which to him is inexplicable, gives evidence of its presence within.

Can we at least predict that no other presidential election is likely to have this much Twitter in it?

I am extremely freaked out by the way Donald Trump has hypnotized the whole country, that's for fucking sure. Even if it ends in a puff of smoke, it is deeply unsettling to see how charisma -- this exceedingly weird version of charisma -- can work. So far though I've avoided seeing him on video or hearing his voice even once, and without all that much effort. This may also be the last presidential election where that is possible (or desirable).

My level of depression and disgust about this election is such that I assume that this latest scandal will hardly affect his numbers at all. Nothing before it has.

On a different note, it's ridiculous that when Clinton articulates what might be her actual positions on things and they are "hacked" and released some Democrats are reduced to suggesting that the Russians must have edited the transcripts.

29 is one of the things I find the weirdest. That the Russian government is actively trying to influence the election in favor of a particular candidate through an army of hackers seems to be kind of an afterthought instead of the biggest deal ever, when not being cheered on by the moron-left crew. I dunno that I'd have expected that. Also the coverage of the "leak" is horrendously stupid, alleviated only by being drowned out by Trump's monstrosity.

29, 30: The other interesting thing about that is that they've got nothing. I mean, there are good open political reasons not to be happy that Clinton's the only viable candidate based on positions she's taken in public. But leaking stolen documents? I haven't been paying close attention, but has anything even a little damaging come out about here?

I reached out to a half-dozen current and former officials responsible for both public diplomacy and cyber security. None of them expressed confidence in which agency should take the lead in responding to a massive effort to leak private correspondence heavily weighted toward one party in an election.

And this

Russia's big innovation in information warfare isn't to create traditional propaganda [...] their intent isn't to provide an alternative set of facts but to attack the very idea of facts. You don't have to believe their version of events, but you will question whether there is a version of events.

I think 33.2 addresses this: it doesn't matter what the content of the leak is, it's just grist for the confusion mill. The Russians could save themselves a lot of money by straight up lying, like Trump is.

In other animal news, I remembered that kittens were adorable, but until we got a pair I'd forgotten they were jerks. Salvador spent all night alternately fighting with my hair and trying to tunnel under my neck.

Also, fuck everyone who 1) acts outraged but doesn't rescind an endorsement or 2) didn't rescind an endorsement after any of the previous five hundred horrible things Trump said and did or 3) rescinds their endorsement but say they still won't vote for Clinton. Craven, the lot of them.

Congratulations on the kitties. Good names. I had to stop paying attention to Nextdoor because I think two cats is the right size for our house/family but I can't go through adjusting to a new one now (and because I prefer older cats, inevitable sooner death).

The KKK alone isn't what took down Reconstruction. While the KKK was most violent, the federal government, with Congressional authorization, kept sending troops in. It was the "respectable" whites who sidelined (while also benefiting from) the KKK who took over power.

Huh, I guess I underestimated the factor of Republicans opportunistically taking this moment to disavow. No more Hillary endorsements, but calls to drop out from actual sitting electeds (Thune, Heck), and Ayotte says she'll write in Pence.

This feels like the political Singularity. Every day is about twice as crazy as the last.

ISTM voting Clinton in blue states will also help the legitimacy of the outcome by racking up the overall popular vote margin.

Trump has said he will not quit, so I now believe he will. There is an established narrative pattern to these things leading to what I think of as (for those who can remember the early days of Bloom County, back when it was funny) the "Mr America Naked as a Jaybird" moment.

Nah. He's got a whole range of parries over this latest thing, several of which he's already deployed. Nobody's perfect. Everyone has a past. This is a distraction (from the issues, I guess). It was locker room talk.

Yet to come, or at least available to him: Have I ever pretended to be politically correct? Beautiful women are just ... beautiful ... amirite? It's no secret that I used to be a playboy. And by the way, build the wall!

Hrm -- I doubt it. Not unless it's something like Ivanka claiming he molested her or something, or a tape of him saying he doesn't mean a damn bit of the policy proposals he's been conveying on the campaign trail.

He just has too many whirly-eyed supporters who are with him no matter what. He eats that shit up.

It's a pretty unstable situation. I don't think he'll quit, but I don't know what will happen.

As Jeet Heer observes, he has a lock on a large part of the GOP base, and no loyalty to the GOP as an organization; similarly, they have no leverage on him. The more elites who go against him (it's now up to 6 sitting senators), the more he can say he was stabbed in the back and retain his dignity even after he loses big.

More practically, Trump's move now is to shift from "I'm better" to "She's worse." He's already begun this with the focus on Bill Clinton's peccadillos, but he'd be better off hammering away on what passes for the issues with him. Go back to the tried-and-true L-word: Hillary's a tax and spend liberal. She's going to raise your taxes. She's going to give handouts to the lazies (you know who they are). Etc. The number of voters who are convinced by that narrative isn't going to change.

It's not going to win him the election, but it can keep him roughly where he's polling now, so he can lose with protest and dignity all the way to his next thing, Trump Media.

Nice quote from somebody I probably should have heard of at the other place (Danielle Evans?): "I doubt Trump will quit, but Trump being replaced by Pence would be like escaping Brave New World only to end up in The Handmaid's Tale."

63 Shocks me primarily because apparently there is a bridge too far for the RNC. Considering all they've gone along with so far, I didn't think this was so radically different.

The RNC is basically fucked. If Trump steps down, they've alienated their angry white nationalist base. If he doesn't, they've alienated all women and most of the establishment. There is no way Trump stepping down doesn't lead to open civil war in the Republican Party.

The bridge too far is just fear of a downticket massacre. It was already becoming clear that he was going to lose. It's now a dead certainty. Coming just one cycle after the legitimate rape election is devastating for their long-term prospects with younger voters.

73: She's the author of a short-story collection called Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. I got halfway through it before deciding it was too sad, but one of the stories I read was really a gem.

I am making bagels. This feels like a good solution for a day in which the world is completely verklempt.

Yeah. The Trump campaign isn't running much of a state level ground game itself - it's relying on the RNC to do that for them. Someone said upthread that the RNC didn't have much leverage over Trump, but I don't think that's true*; he needs them to do the very basic level stuff.

The RNC's priorities are to hold the Senate, then the House, then try for the Presidency. Trump fucks up this badly, he's first under the bus in terms of their allocation of resources.

79: Yeah, I was trying to come up with a word for the stew of emotions floating around the world today -- disgust, fear, celebration, vindication, revulsion, pessimism, anger, frustration, triumph, betrayal, shame, etcetera etcetera -- and I settled on "verklempt" but that may not have been the right choice.

It helps to have bread flour, but otherwise it's really simple. Bread flour, water, yeast, salt. Some brown sugar and water to boil them in. Maybe an egg to brush on top of of them when they're baking if you want to get fancy. I like to throw a little coarse salt on top, but again not necessary.

It's also a really fun activity to do with kids. My sobrinos love making bagels.

(Do not believe the stupid NYT and their article about how the only real bagels are made with lye. Bunch of baloney.)

Yeah, it's been fairly clear all along that Trump does not care about maximizing his chances of winning. He wants a fun ride and has extensive enough alternative plans that losing would be just as enjoyable. In fact, possibly more so if he always knew all these tapes were bound to come out sooner or later (he may have accepted the nomination against his better judgment).

29, 30 it is so weird; like am I hallucinating that Russia is trying to rig U.S. elections? Is... did anyone else see... ? No? Is this not a big deal, are we collectively over Russian espionage now, either way is cool just TELL me so I don't show up in the wrong outfit.

Anyway I know the """"""art"""""" director who did today's Daily News cover. They're mostly sold out but he's holding on to a bunch for me if anyone wants.

Also is the "grab them by the pussy" oration exceptionally bad? Have I just been destroyed by my own low expectations? Whatever it takes to amputate this festering limb is ok with me but have there not been... hundreds of "grab them by the pussy" moments in this election?

108 though actually then his election might bode well for my high school dream of getting the sex act/baseball stuff metrics standardized. Ugh the bases were different at every school it was impossible to figure out who was doing what.

I think the agreement thing is fine, actually, because it allows for differentiation between statements like "grab them by the arms" meaning grab each of them by both arms and "grab them by the arm" meaning grab each of them by one arm. Maybe you think that one should just say "grab each" rather than "grab them" in such a case anyway, I dunno.

120: Maybe I'm thinking it's different when there's a one-to-one relationship between person and thing (I am making assumptions here that might be insufficiently woke.). No, it's probably just the "grab them" phrasing implying a collective recipient of the action when it's a series of actions with singular recipients. On further reflection I think you're right that it's fine, although it still feels weird to me (over and beyond the creepiness described).

A zillion people have said this already, but I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't have been normal locker room talk in any locker room I've ever been in, even in middle school. I think this drives some of the response -- this is way unacceptable even in deep bro/jock culture. Saying "nice ass" is one thing but "grab her in the pussy" gets a what is WRONG with that dude response basically anywhere. It's just so not-cool. It's insane creepazoid shunned monster behavior.

At my summer camp we did in fact try to get a standard yard line definition (increments of 10) for various acts but it was too much for 12 year old boys to keep in their heads all at once. Also it was a Canadian camp so the American kids refused to go along with their 55 yard line bullshit.

124- Maybe not locker room talk but at said summer camp there were songs that had far worse content. Some of which I found out after the invention of Internet search engines were derived from slave work chants which is totally bizarre since most kids there were upper middle class to wealthy Jews.

I just made the mistake of going to Crooked Timber. What a bunch of fuckheads. Somehow they are more concerned with Hillary's Wall Street speeches than Trump's comments. God I hate our circular firing squad.

124 reminds me of when I taught English in China and there was this 42 yo Aussie loser who was super openly racist and misogynistic, and the American frat boys he lived with complained to the school about his sexist and disgusting behavior. At least those frat boys definitely had a strong bro code in which raping prostitutes and bragging about it was certainly beyond the pale.

124 is certainly true of my (limited) experience in these kinds of all-male spaces, but it's clear from a lot of these anecdotes that there are plenty of other all-male spaces that are much more rape-tolerant, and those are clearly where Trump spends much of his time.

There was a great/creepy exchange that got edited out of the recent dr Oz show, where Ivanka comes on stage and kisses Dr Oz and Trump, and Trump says, "isn't she great? I kiss her as much I can," or something.

Somehow they are more concerned with Hillary's Wall Street speeches than Trump's comments.

The Trump tape was some fine timing to get everyone to ignore the Wall Street speeches. Not that anything in the speeches seems particularly bad to me, but, absent the Trump thing, it would have been this weekend's media circus. But the Trump tape has blown that out of the water.

I wonder if Hillary's people had a hand in the timing here. If so, that was incredibly well-executed.

I thought it was an obvious joke, but you people are so pessimistic that you're pessimistic enough to think it might be serious, making you way more pessimistic than I am!

Sorry, ogged! I did understand that you were joking, but this election is making me crazy, and overly-earnest.

I'm not actually all that pessimistic about Hillary's odds in the general.

I'm just utterly despondent about what this electoral cycle has revealed about American political culture, and about large swathes of the American population, in 2016. It's maybe not even so much Trump himself, though he is vile and deplorable beyond measure -- he's a trickster and a con artist and a skeevy real estate developer, but: he's not the first of his type, and he certainly won't be the last. It's more the fact that he has vocal and die-hard and passionate supporters, who perhaps comprise some 40 percent of the American voting public.

I can no longer do that reasonable-and-tolerant-and-broad-minded-liberal thing, where we attempt to find some middle ground, to carve out a compromise amongst good-faith actors who happen to disagree on this or that matter of public policy. If you're supporting Trump, you are a bad apple, and a bad actor, and you are not welcome in my home, or in my polity.

What was the timing exactly? Based on looking at the Wikileaks twitter food, it seems like that story broke at about 4:00 PM on Friday, which is the same time as the Trump story broke. According to something I read on WaPo (but which I'm now paywalled out of) The Trump story was originally supposed to have broken by Access Hollywood/NBC in the Sunday/Monday timeframe, in the wake of the next debate. But, instead, somebody leaked to WaPo early in the day on Friday.

So why was it moved up? Possibilities are A) coincidence, or B) Hillary has moles in the Wikileaks and/or Trump organization and got wind of the email leak in the pipeline, so they decided to move up the timetable on the Trump tape story.

Another thing that strikes me as weird is that both of these stories dropped on a Friday afternoon. It used to be that Friday afternoon was for news you wanted buried.... has that changed?

In the full article in 129, Trump also discusses his daughter's breast size. But I think even more appalling are his comments about how he can walk backstage and "inspect" pageant contestants when they're getting dressed.

I'm actually mildly impressed 's that Stern's female co-host (Quivers) asks if it's a "conflict of interest" for him to get sexually involved with contestants.

And in this clip, when asked what she and her father have in common, Ivanka says "Real estate and golf."

Trump says blithely, "Well, I was going to say sex," to screams of laughter from the audience, and "That was Hulk Hogan creepy" from the host.

I think it's great and hilarious that Trump has invited/created/incurred such rancid hatred from the press.

I do not have a particularly high opinion of the press, mainstream or otherwise, and I dislike the sort of frienzied avalanches of things going viral and everyone fighting about them on facebook and all the papers having the same content about current events and ESPECIALLY all the reporting on reporting that happens. I'm a brat! Some of my best friends are journos.

But I really do adore that Trump is so narcissistic he thinks it is a plausible idea to win a national election (any national election, but also, of course, this one is the biggest) with the open enmity of all of journalism. Sure, ban the WaPo! Say tons of scathingly dismissive insults about reporters! They're peons! There's no conceivable way they could ever do anything to hurt someone as powerful as Donald!

Anyway I assume the timing of this, and any other thing that hurts Trump or favors Clinton, is that people who work in the news industry hate Trump and will go out of their way to do things to harm him. I didn't interpret it as a Clinton mole, I interpreted as there being thousands of anti-Trump salts embedded throughout every newspaper and website and magazine everywhere.

I didn't interpret it as a Clinton mole, I interpreted as there being thousands of anti-Trump salts embedded throughout every newspaper and website and magazine everywhere.

Sure, although I think some of the people who hate Trump the most are probably people inside his organization that know him best, and deeply understand how bad he would be for the country. Which makes the mole idea seem very plausible to me.

I just made the mistake of going to Crooked Timber. What a bunch of fuckheads. Somehow they are more concerned with Hillary's Wall Street speeches than Trump's comments. God I hate our circular firing squad.

And, if Hillary is elected, there is nothing she could do which would make them think that their suspicion was misguided because the standard they want to set for (left) politicians is, "will they work for a political transformation of the country." It makes me think that Yglesias may have their number.

At both the 1992 and 2008 conventions, Bill and Obama both proudly claimed the mantle of political outsiders and promised to clean up the mess in Washington. Fundamentally, that's what voters want to hear. ...

Amidst all the other remarkable aspects of the 2016 campaign, this is a thread that tends to get lost but Clinton is asking the American people to do something they almost never do -- admit that the American political system fundamentally is what it is, and so you might as well elect someone who's good at operating it in rather dream of someone who's going to show up and clean up the mess in Washington. Fundamentally, the only message of the secret speeches is that Clinton is exactly who we thought she was -- someone who's been around a long time, someone who knows a lot of stuff, someone who's cozy with the established players, and someone who doesn't really embrace good government pieties.

You can make of this what you will -- I personally find it kind of charming but most Americans seem not to -- but like it or not it's worth admitting to yourself that peeling back further layers of the onion and delving into deeper realms of secrecy isn't going to teach us much of anything new about her.

Another thing that strikes me as weird is that both of these stories dropped on a Friday afternoon. It used to be that Friday afternoon was for news you wanted buried.... has that changed?

I saw something recently speculating that is has changed. That Friday used to be the day to dump stories because the traditional media wouldn't cover it until Monday (and there would be other things to cover). But, in this era of social media, if you don't need traditional media coverage to break a story, releasing something on a Friday afternoon means that it doesn't have competition from other news and can dominate social media over the weekend.

I don't know if that's true in general, but it would apply to either of these stories.

This news cycle just keeps getting more and more surreal. A year ago I said: "I really hope it actually was the Clintons' idea to send him careening madly through the primaries because it would be such genius. You couldn't pick a better wrecking ball."

162: Aw, don't beat yourself up! You COULDN'T pick a better wrecking ball! It's not your fault that the wrecking ball had undreamt-of powers of wreckage. Back in those days, we thought a Post-September Surprise was just like a DUI or something.

Question: If Trump starts hemorrhaging support, some large proportion of which flows to Gary Johnson, such that Johnson starts polling above 15% or whatever the line is, does Gary Johnson get a podium at the third debate? Or are the debates lineups already set in stone?

136: NYT reporter had it as "Wikileaks tweeted out the Podesta hack less than 30 minutes after WaPo and then NBC posted on the Trump video." So possibility that it was an attempt to distract. Would only work if they have stuff ready to go, which they may. Also fits their seemingly delusional sense of the importance of what they have. And I also do think the Friday thing fro bad news is not so much a thing anymore, especially during a national election when folks are paying attention all the time. Winning Sunday morning...

Get ready for a big dose of that from Guiliani et al (not to mention Trump himself--but not sure if at the debate itself). Curious what the media will do (I think they will go half in -- cretins like Halperin and Cillizza want to be all in, and the cables will take the bait, but I think it will not be a complete conflagration like it was in the 90s*.)

* Almost had to laugh when the Mercers (big funders sticking by The Donald) claimed: "The same media that resolutely looked away when the most powerful man in the world, a sitting U.S. president with multiple violent sexual assaults to his credit, snared an impressionable young intern in his web and ruined her life, now expects us to gasp with revulsion at Mr. Trump's irreverent comments).

Unsure of the source, but re: NBC not immediately releasing the tape, a Rolling Stone writer tweeted this excerpt

NBC News was aware of video footage of Donald Trump making lewd and disparaging remarks about women for nearly four days, a network executive said Saturday, but delayed reporting about the story out of concern that Trump would sue the network.

I'm actually impressed by how many GOP politicians have been straight up calling him out on bragging about sexual assault. McCain most notably, but there are others. And less surprisingly, the Dems are all over this too.

And I think Ezra has this right: What we are seeing is how Trump and GOP's needs diverge. GOP needs to limit damage. Trump will take on unlimited risk for a chance to win.

The Bill CLinton stuff is a high-risk Hail Mary hoping to bring it all down into the gutter. Trump campaign realizes his is probably topped out in the low 40s so need to go all in on attempts at nuclear destruction even if likely to boomerang or be ineffective.

It's pretty much only Bannon (Breitbart guy), Guiliani, Hannity, Gingrich, his kids, lackey spokespeople*, crazy superwealthy donors, and the 40 million economically anxious fucktards of America left on his side at this point so no one left who does not think it is a good idea.

*KellyAnne Conway giving way to Guiliani on Meet the Press (I think ) tomorrow, but she scoffed at a reporter who suggested she was on the way out. (And she was right there with the sex-crazed loons** in the 90s so...)

**Who could have imagined that Ken Starr would end up as a rape-apologist at a place like Baylor...

99 is true, and should really be talked about. Also from the thing I linked earlier:

The revelation that the government of Russia is trying to influence a U.S. election by attacking candidates and disrupting media coverage should be a big deal, but it hasn't yet sparked much urgency in the general public. This is not mere red baiting; a hostile government attempting to manipulate a presidential election is a crisis-level event.

186 "Should be talked about" aside what I'm all ??? about is when/how got to the point where we don't talk about it. It's not even one of those "ok this is important I know but ughhh it's about the IMF or redistricting or something else dry-sounding," it's totally sexy! Russian spies! Doesn't anyone watch The Americans?

It's been kind of funny watching Glenn Greenwald argue (on twitter) that since Dems mocked Romney for naming Russia America's biggest enemy in 2012, it's completely risible for them to be concerned about Russia in 2016. Even though that argument has several obvious problems!

Of course it's Russia's decline. The country is literally dying, they have no prospects, and the ruling class has no idea what to do except double down and try to go back to 1945 or 1900 or something. They think American spooks are coming to overthrow them so they're throwing all these desperate moves, in the process essentially committing acts of war against the US. If it weren't for the Trump circus we'd be in Cold War Armageddon standoff right now.

I'd say they are the biggest threat right now. They're in a corner, they're quite literally fascist (as in, POC are advised by the police to stay home on Hitler's birthday), and they still have thousands of nukes lying around.

205: I don't have a link in front of me, but what I meant was that some time in the last few years Russians stopped dying faster than they were being born,which had been the case for many years. That fertility rate is not unusual for a European country,btw.

So, ok, the country is literally not being born at replacement level fertility. Still looking grim.

I think the United States is almost the only first world country that is being born at replacement levels. Others are either dying out or relying on immigration. The British government just decided it would prefer to die out, but it hasn't asked anybody else their opinion.

I'm not sure that Russia fully counts as first world, but it's not third, and I never understood what the second world was.

I'm not sure that Russia fully counts as first world, but it's not third, and I never understood what the second world was.

Back when they made up the first/second/third world distinction, the second world was literally Russia and its Communist satellites. The first world being the rich economies of the west + Japan and the third world being what they now call "developing" countries.

I was told that "third world" was the leftovers after old world and new world and first and second were retconned by idiots like "begs the question," but I did a bit of research and Spike is right. I still prefer my original incorrect explanation, but it's wrong.

France has consistently had at or near replacement birth rates for many years, although the PS under hollande has been doing their best to destroy state support for families. It isn't rocket science - women want to be able to remain in the workforce after becoming mothers so need state regulation of leave policies, families raising children need financial support irrespective of family "type" ie married, un- or reconstituted, and widely available childcare of decent quality added to the mix will generally get you there. Why France has been able to muster the political support for these policies and other EU countries not so much is a more interesting question.

When John Wolfe died a few months ago, and I read the obituaries, I was struck by how that family had evolved over time. Stories I learned about his father's generation, how privileged, wild and dissipated they'd been when young in the twenties, left me expecting something else.

Yes and state anxiety about population/belief in demographic strength as the ultimate bulwark against aggression and support for french dominance goes back even further than franco Prussian war. Interestingly it is so deeply rooted in political life that pétain's wrapping vichy in the natalist flag to an extreme extreme wasn't enough to sour post war France on the whole thing.

223, 226: Not so sure. Might only be using it as 'threat", and will save it for the surrogates/rallies. Story out that debate mods will lead with the tape as the first question(s). Pretty sure they should not; and zero confidence they will not come up with a very stupid question.

OT: one of my kids stayed the night at a friend's house last night. Mom asked me to pick him up at 11. When I showed up at 11, she answered the door wearing nothing but a very short bathrobe. Then she casually mentioned that her husband wasn't home and the kids were playing in the basement. My question is: was she possibly coming on to me, or definitely coming on to me? (Or am I out of my mind and that's totally normal?)

OT: our kids had a friend over last night, and I asked the friend's father to pick him up at 11. When he showed up at the door, he wasn't wearing pants. He asked whether my husband was home and if the kids were busy. My question: does he want me to take him pants shopping, or is this totally normal?

I know we've had a thread on this already but the outright naked anti-Semitism Trump has unleashed into American public life is frightening. It's like some bizarro universe and I still find myself boggling at it.

242.2. I feel you. Brexit hasn't (yet) provided any anti-semitic spectaculars, though I've no doubt it will, but a string of attacks on immigrants and a 140% increase in homophobic attacks since the vote.

For some reason, I don't feel revulsion for Trump in the way that I did for W. I wonder how much I (and maybe others) just don't slot him into our "politician" mental category, and therefore interpret him differently.

For some reason, I don't feel revulsion for Trump in the way that I did for W. I wonder how much I (and maybe others) just don't slot him into our "politician" mental category, and therefore interpret him differently.

Trump, Jon Peters, Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, we all know all these guys act that way

248-9: Really? I feel much more revulsion for Trump. Bush, I was disgusted by on account of what he represented in American politics as much as by the man himself. If he'd stayed home clearing brush he would have been largely harmless. Trump, on the other hand, is just a loathsome human being who has been an evil piece of shit his whole life.

Isn't tonight a town hall forum? Are the questions vetted? "Mr. Trump, you said you moved on her like a bitch, and you also said that you moved on her very heavily. Can you compare and contrast these modes of movement, and perhaps, backing up for a moment, explain whether you were moving as if she were a bitch, or you yourself were moving in the manner of a bitch? Thank you."

zero confidence they will not come up with a very stupid question.
Mr Trump, given the importance of cats to the infrastructure of the Internet, how do you justify using language so insulting to feline-Americans?

urple, I'm sure you've probably already thought of this, but if the woman's kids go to the same school as your kids, just check the sign-up genius for the next PTA event. If there's like six dads signed up for working with her, she does this lots.

272: That could be part of it, but it would have to be a more nuanced distinction than "North/South"; Trump's very Northern, in that he's very New York in a way that a lot of people in other parts of the country, including much of the North, have a visceral distaste for. (I think this is a big part of the reason he's polling so poorly in Alaska, for instance. His shtick really does not play well here.)

Why would I answer the door? Then you have to talk to people! That's nonsense.

Actually this is reminding me of the bit from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever where the kids cast as shepherds in the Nativity play are told to bring in their dads' bathrobes for their costumes and one complains that his dad doesn't have a bathrobe (this is a period piece; obviously now it would be that he doesn't have a dad) and oh no what does he wear to hang around the house? HIS UNDERWEAR! And eight-year-old me was totally scandalized but also amused. The end.

Anyhow, the sad true story is that being a foster parent generally means you have to make more conservative choices about bedwear and housewear than you might otherwise, and if you go on to become a transracial adoptive family under heightened scrutiny, at some point you might just give up and admit you're totally going to sleep in this tank top and jeans tonight, alas.

John Scalzi (who's political writing this campaign season has been quite good) just posted a rant about Trump which manages quite neatly to combine the messages, "Trump is uniquely bad" and "Trump's badness is an expression of the badness of the Republican party."